Traub Abstract

Direct detection of exoplanets has a huge potential ability to tell us about relatively
detailed conditions on those planets, including the search for life on an Earth-like terrestrial one.
This potential is limited by a number of instrumental realities, among which the hardest to overcome are
the faintness of exoplanets and the background photons from the exozodi dust disk within which the exoplanets
are likely to be orbiting.

The Ares V can provide a means to the solution for both of these limiting factors. For any of the presently
contemplated versions of the Terrestrial Planet Finder missions, whether internal coronagraph, external
coronagraph (occulter), or interferometer with free-flying spacecraft, the main performance limitations are
collecting area and angular resolution. These two factors are directly related to the constraints of faintness
and exozodi: larger collecting areas increase the signal counts, and large baselines increase the angular
resolution hence the separation of planet from background.

In this talk I will focus on the dramatically large scientific improvement expected in the characterization of
an exoplanet from the capabilities to be provided by the Ares V launch vehicle.